The announcement of a federal senate inquiry into the failed forestry Managed Investment Schemes (MIS) has been welcomed by one of Esperance, Western Australia’s original tree farmers. Source: The Esperance Express
South East Forest Foundation member David Smallwood was one of the first in the region to begin planting blue gums for commercial harvesting in the 1990s.
He was one of many farmers around Esperance left holding stranded assets when the forestry schemes collapsed.
Mr Smallwood said he hoped the inquiry would examine the management of plantations and the commission’s structure of the MIS.
“I believe part of the problem was that they took their eyes off management,” he said.
Instead, Mr Smallwood said too much of the focus was on the investment side and using the MIS as a tax write-off.
Australian Greens secured the inquiry during their final days holding the balance of power in the senate.
Greens senator for Tasmania Peter Whish-Wilson said the inquiry would look at the role successive federal governments played in the failed schemes.
“The establishment and subsequent collapse of the MIS is the signature economic policy failure of recent Coalition governments,” he said.
“The collapse of the schemes has lost small investors their life savings and in some cases their homes. The plantations established as part of these tax minimisation schemes have changed the face of rural communities and alienated valuable agricultural land.
“This inquiry is a chance to look not just at the policy mistakes that were made but also at what the role of government is in dealing with the legacy of these schemes.”
The inquiry will include an examination into the burden on farmers and other agricultural producers who have been left with the uncertainty of timber plantations linked to forestry MIS on their land.
It will also look at options for reforming forestry MIS to protect investors and rural communities in the future. However, Federal Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson said the senate inquiry was unnecessary.
“The senate will do what it does but I think this is ancient history,” he said.
“There is no suggestion that the MIS will be reintroduced.”
Hard lessons have been learnt and those involved don’t need a senate inquiry to tell them that.”
Mr Wilson said he hoped to work with plantation owners in the Esperance region in order to find a buyer for their trees.
Some owners have already resorted to burning their trees in order to clear the land for cropping.
“It is an absolute tragedy for this resource to go up in smoke,” said Mr Wilson. Using the trees to fuel a biomass plant in Esperance could be one option, he said.
